Oilers' Prospects Desjardins NHLE For February - Omark Is Still On Fire

The curtain falls on a February that saw the spotlight shift towards a pair of kids that haven't had much positive press since the arrival of Jordan Eberle and Pääjärvi.  Riley Nash and Chris VandeVelde, the pair of erudite centers stormed through February, combining for 22 points in 12 games.  Nash racked up four goals and nine assists in seven games and VandeVelde tallied three goals and six assists in five games.  Nash's NHLE82 jumped from 26 to 38 and VandeVelde's NHLE82 moved from 26 to 32.  

Linus Omark jumped to the top of the equivalency list with a strong month as well, pushing Dynamo Moscow to a 4th place finish and into the KHL playoffs.

Jordan Eberle's pace has slowed a bit once again, but he's still having a fine season on a weak team.  Pääjärvi has been on a pace in the low-40s for much of the season and that hasn't changed.  Phil Cornet's pace has slowed a bit and Teemu Hartikainen has entered another slump, though he's still firing (14 shots in his last two games).

The end of the NCAA season draws near and it looks like three of these guys will make the post-season, though that is very much in the air as the conference tournaments begin.  

NHLE was developed by the indefatigable Gabriel Desjardins of Behindthenet.ca and the outstanding Behind The Net Hockey. Gabe's methodologies are described on his translations page:

One way to evaluate the difficulty of one league relative to another is to examine the relative performance of players who have played in both leagues.  Players rarely play significant time in two leagues in the same year, but they often play in one league in one year and in another the next.  As long as a player’s skill level is approximately constant over this two year period, the ratio of his performance in each league can be used to estimate the relative difficulty of the two leagues.